#3503 Sparks - Pulling Rabbits out of a Hat

2.5/5

if you want to understand the sixteen year, six-album fistfight with the world that this album kicked off, look no further than the title track.

You can almost picture the Maels having a beer with friends one night when, in a moment of wellmeaning drunken candor, someone drawls

"you guys are such talented songwriters! how come you've never had
you know
a hit?"

detached, one replies

"we could have, could have had dozens. If that was that's what we were going for"

And then Ron and Russel were challenged to prove it.

--

Of course, its not that Sparks were ever _aggressively disinterested in having a hit. But they'd never stooped to making something in the basest terms of what was popular. And in the mid-80's, stooping was a pretty all or nothing proposition.

And so with much swagger does this album kick off, announcing that, for my next trick, I will make pop music, and people will love it. And this is the easiest, most basic trick there is, the pulling a rabbit out of a hat of songwriting. And I have performed so much grander tricks: made a pauper a king, raised the titanic, made legitimately great music for a decade.

And even the choice of phrasing: I am pulling rabbits, one after another, out of this hat. Not one rabbit. Not out of multiple hats. I am _churning _these _hits _out until the room looks like the cover of fucking Hello Young Lovers.

But then the crux of the matter in the song's whelp of a chorus:

_pulling rabbits out of a hat
_pulling rabbits out of a hat

_all I get is polite applause!
_applause, applause, applause, applause, applause 

It is as fine a run of 11 words as you'll find in music, and 6 of them are the same one. A disdain for the payoff of this trick, that the applause is polite, that the appreciation is critical, but halfhearted, and certainly without commercial payoff. For all its confidence, the song betrays an anticipation that this all will fail. Polite applause, who needs it. But Russell continues!

Applause! he repeats again and again, desperate and ecstatic and failing, as if flogging one team of horses and being flogged by another.

is that all I get? god yes the applause! more, more you fallow fools!

it is cheap and hollow and its all that I want and there will never be enough.

a wracked, complicated song, sneering at the audience and desperate for its affection, wrenching itself ouroboran into operatic glam self-loathing. An overlooked art-pop gem.

--

Of course, Sparks was not successful. The album is packed cheap, bouncing pop songs, each packed with budget synths and endless repetition of the name of the song. There's flashes of wry humor, but nothing that matches the apparently-worthy-of-400-words opener, and certainly nothing unscathed by its brazen attempt to hit a single by scattershot.

It's like the Maels made this album on a bet, but they weren't really sure they wanted to win it.

--

Stick with us for Sparks Week 2 - The Repetition Era, where we'll see a descent into nothingness, a surprising resurgence, a swing at cosmic justice, and the most overrated ending since The Usual Suspects!